Building a game for Android is easy, thanks to a multitude of game engines and tools that allow you to quickly get started. This is true for AndEngine as well. If you are reading this text, you have probably already tried your hand at, at least, a basic AndEngine game. After getting started like this, the next questions are: how to move from this game to those wonderful games you have seen elsewhere? How to make those cool animations, lighting, shadows, and other amazing effects? And how to get them with AndEngine?
This book takes you through the many advanced topics you may encounter while making the perfect Android-based game. After explaining the theory behind each technology, it proceeds to show you how to implement it in an AndEngine-based application.
Chapter 1, Setting Up the Project, runs through the basics of setting up an AndEngine-based application, as well as shows you how to configure your development environment.
Chapter 2, Replacing 2D Sprites with 3D Models, illustrates how you can use 3D-mesh-based models with AndEngine, adding further tools to your asset development process. This chapter also provides full sample code to demonstrate how to integrate 3D models into AndEngine's rendering process.
Chapter 3, Physics Engine Integration, demonstrates the use of the Box2D physics add-on for AndEngine and discusses 2D versus 3D physics as well as the use of other physics engines.
Chapter 4, Frame-based Animation Sequences, discusses the various ways of implementing animation using frame-based systems. These are demonstrated using AndEngine-based examples.
Chapter 5, Skeletal Animations, looks at the advanced topic of using skeleton-based animation in order to achieve highly refined animation without exceeding resource budgets.
Chapter 6, Creating 3D Effects in 2D, highlights the differences and similarities between 2D and 3D scenes, and tells you how to achieve 3D effects in a 2D scene.
Chapter 7, Static Lighting, shows the various techniques used to add lighting and shadows to a scene without making any dynamic calculations during runtime, as well as the limitations posed by this approach.
Chapter 8, Dynamic Lighting, balances the advantages of using dynamic lighting and shadows against the disadvantages of its runtime requirements.
Chapter 9, User Interfaces, takes a detailed look at the support available for user interfaces as they exist in AndEngine, as well as the use of native Android widgets in an AndEngine application, for example, for text input.
Chapter 10, Shading, Aliasing, and Resolutions, dives into the complex topic of programming GLSL shaders for OpenGL ES 2.0 and better graphics hardware. This chapter also shows you how to add anti-aliasing using this and other methods. Finally, it looks at how to handle the various resolutions of the Android device that the game will eventually run on.
Chapter 11, Adding Sounds and Effects, explores the topic of music and sound effects in a game, looking at native AndEngine APIs as well as the use of OpenSL ES and OpenAL.
Chapter 12, Building Worlds for Our Project, focuses on the broad topic of world-building, including how to construct and load/unload scenes and the management of resources. It also looks at transitioning between different scenes and the concepts of hierarchies and limitations within a scene.
Chapter 13, Networking and Latency, defines the multitude of choices out there for connecting Android devices with each other via a network as well as Bluetooth, and the implications this has on gameplay experiences. This chapter also looks at the MultiPlayer add-on for AndEngine.
Chapter 14, Adding Custom Functionality, finally looks at how you can expand on the lessons learned in this book through a number of techniques to extend AndEngine's functionality without modifying a single line of its code. It also looks at implementing plugin systems in both Java and native code.
In order to follow along with this book, it is important that you use a computer that is supported by the Android SDK and NDK (running Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux). Both Eclipse with the Android Developer Tool (ADT) plugin and the new Android Studio IDE will work.
Possessing an Android device that supports OpenGL ES 2.0 is also very helpful, although many code samples will likely work on the Android SDK's emulator as well.
This book is aimed at developers who have gone through all the basic AndEngine tutorials and books and are looking for something more. It's also very suitable for developers with a lot of knowledge of other game engines who are looking to develop games with AndEngine. Knowledge of Java, C++, and Android development is a prerequisite for getting the most out of this book.
In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "We can include other contexts through the use of the include directive."
A block of code is set as follows:
@Override
public IVertexBufferObject getVertexBufferObject() {
return null;
}When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:
final Display display = getWindowManager().getDefaultDisplay(); Point point = new Point(); display.getSize(point); int cameraWidth = point.x; int cameraHeight = point.y;
Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
git clone https://github.com/assimp/assimp.git
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "An example of this is upon resuming the application, when it may have to let the Actor instances that it manages recreate any hardware buffers."
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